The Nationalism 

of the 

New Democracy 



By 

LOUIS DI BERARDINO 

u 


Politics, ladies and gentlemen, is made up in ju^l 
about equal parts ol comprehension and sympathy. 
No man ought to go into politics who does not com¬ 
prehend the task he is going to attempt. 

— Woodrow Wilson. 


March I, 1914 







The Nationalism of the New 
Democracy 

. have broken the harriers which separate 
one colony from the other; the distinctions between 
Pennsylvanians, Virginians, New Yorkers and New 
Englanders are no more —/ am not a Virginian: I am 
an American. —Patrick Henry. 

The roseate dawn of the fifth of September, 1774, arose 
while the representatives of the thirteen small colonies gathered 
to hold the first Congress of the United States in the historical 
Carpenter’s Hall to cast the first basis of a collective entente, 
destined to form the new American Union. 

The natives of North America potently felt the need of 
freeing themselves from the foreign dominion and to constitute 
a self-nationality. The representatives of the first thirteen colo¬ 
nies, in whose souls fluttered the nascent American patriotism, 
certainly were not American citizens, and in the Congress showed 
diverse, more or less individualistic and regional ideas and tenden¬ 
cies, although admitting that the Constitution regulating the rights 
and duties of a new people, which was arising to its autonomous 
and political independence, should be one desired to include 
special privileges relative to their respective States. In Carpen¬ 
ter’s Hall was being developed the American patriotism, but a 
conventional patriotism, more theoretical in form than substance, 
and the representatives of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
etc., although showing promptness for the political fusion of 
their own colony, desired that this should become American in 
name but not in fact. 

In other words, the task was to unite and fuse in one single 
political stroke the first thirteen States under a sole govern¬ 
mental direction which would bind together respectively each 
single ethnical and statal right and privilege of the dififerent 
colonies, which as yet were undecided to proclaim themselves 
American in the true sense of the word. And behold! rising up 
ill the midst of so much dispute and divergent ideas the noble 
and grand historical figure of Patrick Henry, who, with a brief, 
splendid and most eloquent phrase, elevating himself with mind 
and sentiment above the native representatives of the diverse 
colonies, proclaimed the beginning of the new American Nation- 

3 



alism, saying: “I am not a Virginian, but I am an American/’ In 
these words, pronounced by a man of profound patriotic senti¬ 
ment, is indexed all the political philosophy of American Na¬ 
tionalism, not yet well understood ^ven in our days. 

One hundred and forty years ago the venerable, white- 
haired grand patriot was dictating in a few words the supreme 
laws of uniform American Nationalism. Patrick Henry, with 
his phrase, did not affirm himself as a simple patriotic lover of 
the independent fatherland, but a fervid American Nationalist. 
The phrase reads as follows: “All those here convened must 
dissolve themselves of their regionalism and the campanilism of 
their ideas and sentiments more or less privately and egotistically 
patriotic, but to have in mind only the profound sentiment of 
true American Nationalism, uniform and universal. We are 
here united as representatives of thirteen diverse colonies of 
patriotic sentiments, but none of nationalistic sentiments; one 
does not negotiate to cement and unite in a way more uniform 
and concordial than is possible the different sentiments of one 
individual and regional patriotism, but to give life to a new 
alliance and political union, to a new sacred creed, the American 
Nationalism. I am an American signifies I am an American 
citizen—an American Nationalist.” 

Oh, great and noble figure of the true “Father of this 
Country”; you, Patrick Henry, proclaiming over the cradle of 
the American Nation the principles of Nationalism; you desired 
since that early day to establish that political doctrine which your 
successors and custodians of American patriotism have not yet, 
even to this day, understood. You wished to make a new nation 
out of scattered and small States; you wished to form the 
new American people, with uniform ideas and sentiments; you 
preluded to the necessity of seeing thus united and bondfast 
the divers bonds and ethnical characters of the various American 
States, so as to form a single entity, uniform and compact; a 
new ethnical and social body: the true Nationalist American 
people. 

But you were not understood, and to your hope for National 
Unity has been substituted the simple Patriotic Unity, a cen¬ 
tralization of life, of laws, of customs and ideas that still, 
however, remain distinct and diverse with the single States, 
counties and cities. America has been made, but not for the 
American people—the children of a single father, raised in a 
single cradle, the cradle of Liberty and Nationalism preached 
by Patrick Henry—the man who in every deed of his life turned 
his mind to the Creator. 


A clear, pozverfiil, logical, hard-hitting mind is the 
greatest asset any man can possess. Hit hard and sharp 
and put all your weight behind the blozvs. Don^t be 
an egg-cracker. —A. J. Drexel-Biddle. 

4 





NATIONALISM. 


In no other country more than in America does one see 
the need to attend to the construction of self Nationalism; and 
yet there is no other nation in the world which could more 
easily accomplish this than the Republic of the United States. 

The reason why we have not had as yet American Nation¬ 
alism is that many great statesmen and legislators have either 
never thought of this or, having done so, they have not had 
any exact and clear idea of the meaning of the word Nation¬ 
alism, which is not to be confounded with that of the admirers 
of the economic system depicted in “Looking Backward^ (idea), 
nor with the theories of the People’s Party, nor confuse Nation¬ 
alism with Nationality. 

Society is an aggregation of individuals having common 
relations in life. The orderly arrangement of these relations, 
rather the socialization and utilization of all these relations for 
the harmonic and uniform life of a mass of people, is called 
Socialism; for the same reason and in the same way the ethnical 
political system which is called Nationalism is reconstituted. 
This is the result of the orderly arrangement of all the common, 
ethical and social relations of the diverse nationalities of the 
heterogeneous masses of people of different origin, ideas and 
costumes, is the uniform and sole nationalization of all the varied 
social masses that find themselves united under any political 
regime from the least evolved, absolute government to that 
more developed, the Republic. 

Nationalism is an organization of the people living the same 
intellectual and moral life, economic and social, civil and political. 
Therefore it is accomplished with the naturalization of the ideas 
and costumes of the diverse popular masses, educating and co¬ 
ordinating these ideas and varied social habits in the heterogeneous 
ethnical groups in order to establish a vital tie of organic life 
with uniformity of political laws. And inasmuch as the different 
ethnical groups with their diverse characters and relations can 
only unite themselves politically in the camp of Democracy, 
therefore it is logical that Nationalism is only possible through 
the application, development and synthesis of the Democratic 
principles. 

Now, there is no other republic in the world as democratic 
and complexed as the United States, due to the massing of many 
nationalities, and for this reason it has a greater need of con¬ 
stituting its specific nationalism, which she can do more easily 
than the European nations. 

Austria, Germany or England, for example, can never estab¬ 
lish their nationalism, because they embrace foreign national 
territories and entities insomuch that they await the day in which 
they will become redeemed, and therefore they will never lend 
themselves to any tentative form whatsoever of foreign nation¬ 
alization. Whereas, the United States have no unredeemed 

5 


territories, and hence with a wise and prudent nationalistic gov¬ 
ernment decreed, so to say, to nationalize intellectually, morally, 
industrially and economically, and in consequence with the pass¬ 
ing of generations, even ethnically, the United States of America 
could rise very soon to her supreme political unity, fusing the 
immense cosmopolitan people who are yet considered more sub¬ 
ject in their specific ethical-political nationalism than American 
citizens, and which would be the most esteemed and respected 
among the other foreign nationalities of the world. 

This is the supreme social and political evolution to which 
only a great people like that of the United States of America 
can achieve. 

POLITICS IN LIFE. 

What is politics in the practical life of the people? 

It is not science nor philosophy as Plato understood it, 
neither the art of governing as Macchiavelli viewed it. It is 
the result of the constant evolutive movement of the people 
leading to proximal, diverse objects, yet remaining the sole and 
common remote object. Progress and Civilization. Politics is 
not a disciplined source of study by statesmen, but the story of 
the life of the people. 

These have tendencies of self-aspirations for the race, lan¬ 
guage, costumes and all the manifestations of social life which 
in certain circumstances become even more or less national. 
Politics, in a word, is the mirror, the cinematograph of the life 
of a people of determinate ethnical entity. Thus placed, it is 
natural that as the life of a people unfolds itself, so also by 
degrees it comes to determine in itself that political system to 
which it feels more inclined and attached. 

If in infancy is the life of a people, in infancy is its politics. 
The more a community evolves itself in civil life, the more 
capable subjects will appear in her to understand the historic 
movement, the necessities and inclinations of the people them¬ 
selves and behold coming buoyantly a phalanx of politicians who, 
first elected by the people and desirous of doing good for them, 
after mastering themselves in the infinite games of politics, 
l)ecome the most pernicious and blood-sucking of the people that 
they arrive to “turlupinate,” impoverish and deceive, the latter 
never becoming aware of what is being perpetrated to its harm. 

The political life of the nations has two phases—one comic 
and the other serious. The powerful, the rich, the privileged by 
means of reward and position, are the first to rise to the power 
of public life. The people have faith in them, believing them 
powerful and capable of doing good, and hence rush to the 
polls to vote in their favor. In ancient times, before the infinite 
electoral laws, more or less partisan and camarillistic, had risen 
(since they are revoked and modified upon different times 
according to the egoistic and individualistic criterion of the 
diverse political heads and parties), the elections were made by 

6 


uniform and peaceful acclamation rather than by ferocious elect¬ 
oral struggles. To-day the elections are the fruits of the major 
struggles and arrogance of the more powerful and astute. The 
statesman, the political representative of a city, county and state, 
as long as he had power over a mass of the people whose 
economic life depended on him, took no interest in anything, and 
neither did he hear any one. He went to parliament simply to 
spend his time in idleness; he had always ready in the “castle” the 
dispensary full of food and drinks; footmen and valets constantly 
at his command, and he never lacked an infinite mass of wenches, 
whom he always held ready for balls and orgies, inviting even 
the populace to take part in these in order to hold them dis¬ 
suaded and contented, as if to show them the beneficent fruits 
of liberty and diversion in life which attributed to his enormous 
struggles and toil in the collaboration of the political life of his 
country. Sometimes the people showed themselves discontented 
in reference to a certain political counsel suggested by their 
representative, and immediately the latter convinced them to the 
contrary, sustaining his thesis. 

With the passing of times the people have evoluted and are 
no longer disposed to accept the impositions and moral pressions 
of their representatives, and for this reason they have had to 
swing to the right and to the left, oscillating between the positive 
and negative, running anl stopping, no more nor less like 
mountebanks and jugglers in the games of ball, jump and cap¬ 
rioles. Behold coming a mass of political mountebanks who 
pretend to be statesmen and legislators. It is the time of the 
political comedy, of the game of diversion. The great theater 
of national politics is crowded with spectators who have fought 
their way in and now enjoy the spectacle of the nonsensical play, 
laughing at all and each clown, mountebank, etc. In the scene 
there now appear leiters and harlequins in a strangest ludicrous¬ 
ness of visage and form, who are seeking to scale the strong 
and high ramparts of the fortified city. Behold the battle be¬ 
tween the mice and frogs (view the episode of the robbery of 
the bucket) and thousands of other forms of the ridiculous, yet 
of great moral significance. There are representations which 
bear more applause to those who can better act comically upon 
the great stage of the national political theater. 

The epoch of the comic play finishes and that of seriousness 
begins. Oh! what difference. No longer the political theater 
crowded by spectators and curious people who entered by force 
of blows in order to split one’s side with laughter, but it is fre¬ 
quented by few, by those who, having had large experience of 
life, have no longer desire to laugh, but to cry over the increased 
human misery. By too much laughing, great uproar and comic 
confusion, the actors and spectators had forgotten to attend to 
the first needs of life—work, peace and domestic and civic order: 
they had forgotten to attend to the domestic and social duties 
in order that they might run and laugh from morning till night 
for those who, while acting as comedians, had impoverished the 

7 


people, thinning their pocketbook and even robbing them of it 
in the enchantment of the games of prestige. 

At the serious play few men and grave political spectators 
assist, anxious to readjust a little the overturned social shed 
and to render life something more solemn than a momentary 
and ridiculous pastime of children. It is the time of the political 
democracy. 

This is the point to which the American national politics has 
arrived. To-day we are in the second act of the great political 
cinematograph at the serious play. 

After a long period of chaste political life, in which the 
greatest comedians of the comic company just exited from the 
stage, this has been replaced by men of grave temperament, 
studious minds, men of science and great experience in the social 
and political life. These men have given the ban to the buffoonery 
and to the nonsensical laugh. They have routed and pursued, 
many of them who have deceived the people, keeping the latter 
at bay in order to make them laugh and together forget how 
much was due them for the civilian and social life. The time 
of the political hypocrisy is ended; that of honesty and sincerity 
has begun. 

The new Democracy has come and is breaking the soiled 
pavement of rubbish, of ropes, dishes and other utensils which 
served the multitude of comic capriolets to keep the body spec¬ 
tators both diverted and ruined. To-day the new Democracy 
will not only seek to disperse the last vestige of the exorbitant 
comic play, but to raise upon the stage of the social and political 
life of America the beautiful flag which has indeed remained 
hidden behind the thousands of scenes of comic political opera, 
and in certain places spotted and torn in its stately folds, in 
which there remain pale, occluded and invisible to the spectator’s 
eye the words of “Liberty and Independence,” written by Wash¬ 
ington and Lincoln; in opposition to which were placed those of 
slavery and tyranny by the body of the political fugitive. 

THE GREAT SPECTACLE OF POLITICAL LIFE. 

In the great spectacle of national politics there are six prin¬ 
cipal factors from which others of secondary rate depend. 

By the harmonic concert of these six factors and by their 
discord depend the airs which the orchestra plays, and the ap¬ 
proval or disapproval of the public who laughs in the boxes or 
parquet. 

They are: Religion, Justice, Education, Government, Com¬ 
merce, Finance. 

Let us speak separately of all and each of the relations of 
these individual factors of the political life in the United States. 

RELIGION IN POLITICS. 

Religion is that internal tie of heart and mind which unites 
man to his Creator in respectful and humble submission, expli¬ 
cated in the midst of worship in certain laws of practical life. 

8 


lhat religion has existed in all people and that it shall exist 
until the end of time, is beyond doubt based on the long historical 
traditions as well as on the same principle and doctrines which 
are found incarnated in science and universal philosophy, no 
matter of whatever nature these be to the diverse people and 
^ufferent races of the latter upon the earth. Therefore man has 
the right and duty to be a religious entity, at the same time being 
a social, political and civil entity. 

Primitive political life of the ancients was always an inter¬ 
lacing of battles and of victories, more or less religious, to which 
follows those of civil and finally the actual political contentions. 

With the Chinese, Hebrews and Egyptians, the struggles 
were on the same order as those of the Greeks and Romans; they 
were transformed into civil writhes. In the medieval era the 
combats were mixed religious and civil, with the Papacy at the 
head. With the granting of the first political charter in England 
and the other “Posteriori” nations (France, Germany, Italy and 
the United States), began the political struggles which are the 
compend and explanation of those same civil and religious. 
While statesmen in the European nations have had to fix the 
limit of civil and religious power of their people, the United 
States, with a legislature more practical and positive, at the 
same time providing and accentificating, have proclaimed relig¬ 
ious liberty alongside that of civil and political liberty of the 
American people. But while the Constitution prescribes liberty, 
tolerance and respect of all religions, the political power in the 
United States is intrinsically united and connected to certain 
religious confessions which to-day are precisely those which con¬ 
stitute the menace of civil and political liberty itself. No country 
in the world is more religious than the United States. In the 
latter, due to much liberty given the ministers of worship, they 
have introduced religion in the camp of political life, and thus 
have rendered it adherent to the dift'erent political parties to 
such an extent that now the political parties are nothing other 
than religious parties and vice versa. 

This has been openly verified in Philadelphia within the 
past few years and has buried the reform movement in this city 
forever, the people having lost faith in their leaders. 

The ministers, profiting by the political and religious liberty 
given them, have mixed the elements, ideas, doctrines, sentiment, 
men and religious society, with the ideas, doctrines, sentiments, 
men and political society in such a manner as to create in politics 
the same struggles and antagonisms which exist in the religious 
camp between one denomination and another. 

It is a feast or reward, conferring academic degrees, or 
laying of corner-stones for monuments, or a great civil, military, 
industrial, commercial or political ceremony, and we see at the 
side of the Mayor, Governor and President the minister of the 
denomination ready to open or close the ceremony, which is 
entirely civil and political and foreign to every religion. 

9 


This use certainly is not to be condemned as a practice in 
itself good, but by means of it there have been created, first, 
privilege, and then abuses in the clerical camp which to-day has 
subjected the true liberty and political independence of the entire 
nation. Ministers of religion to-day participate and direct all 
meetings, initiatives and institutions of the city. State and Nation. 
They have stretched their arms in all the various departments 
of civic, statal and federal administrations; from their lips hang 
the masses of their religious subjects, to whom they often give 
lessons in politics instead of religious sermons, making use of 
churches for halls, electoral assemblages and political missions, 
dragging their wives and daughters along. This is observed in 
Philadelphia. 

Due to the mixture of religion and politics, the faithful no 
longer receive the catechistic instructions regarding doctrine and 
religious worship, the love and affection to the wife and children, 
the respect to the husband and father, the protection of the 
brother to the brothers and sisters, but for the extreme faith 
that they have in their ministers and pastors, they believe that 
following the civil and political ideas of these, even without 
attending to worships and to their religious practice, they can 
save their souls. 

In this state of things there is derived another spurious 
factor in the American civilization, i. e., political religion ; and 
this dpe to the invasion of religious power in the political field. 
The compunctions and multiplicity of the different political 
parties are those same sorrows of the religious parties. Religion 
has become the field for contentions and a political athletic ring. 
The public does not mind it and neither is it aware, but never¬ 
theless it is (such). When it shall be aware it will be too late 
to remedy—only Nationalism can face the situation. 

The Roman Church had its placid and calm dominion of 
souls while it did not mingle in the temporal power and in 
political strifes. She lost her power even in the spiritual when 
the Papacy wanted to insinuate himself in the national and 
internal questions, for which Dante well reproached Constantine 
for the political liberty granted to the Church, when he says: 

‘'Ah, Constantine! To evils how immense 
Not your conversion, but your dower gave birth. 

From which the first rich Pope took opulence.” 
and which made Pietrarch exclaim: 

Fountain of sorrows, centre of mad ire, 

Rank error’s school and fame of heresy. 

Once Rome, now Babylon, the false and free. 

Whom fondly we lament and long desire. 

Founded in humble poverty and chaste 

Against thy founders lift’st thou now thy horn, “Impudent 
harlot.” 


10 


Therefore we must separate religion from politics, conhiie 
the former in the spiritual field, in the sanctuary of the heart 
and conscience, in the sacred and mysterious silence of the 
churches in whose shadows grew the legions of saints and 
martyrs of the faith. In the silence of prayer the ministers of 
religions will be of greater service to his fold than by guiding 
it by means of force in arches, in valleys, mountains, plains and 
insurmountable political barriers without the useless sacrifice of 
material and spiritual life of his religious subjects. Liberated 
from difficulties and from moral oppression of the invaders of 
religious sects, politics in the United States will be able to serve 
religion itself in order to calm the inevitable disorders and social 
and political compunctions. Religious equilibrium established in 
politics and equilibrium of the latter in religion, the Republic of 
the United States will yet be able to prosper under a regime of 
true liberty and national independence, superior and dominating 
to every race and foreign nationality, to every institution and 
religious denomination, civil and internal politically. 

This accomplishment belongs to the youthful Democratic 
Nationalism. 

JUSTICE IN POLITICS. 

Justice is that great lever which sustains'in its tabernacle 
the swing of the social life of the people in the familiar and 
domestic ties (that is, those nearest to the individual) as well as 
in the vastest and great bonds of diverse social communities and 
political entities in national and international life. It is the 
equalization of the rights and duties of all and each individual 
appertaining to a political society, before the great, universal and 
immutable laws of nature. 

Justice is the sanction of these laws interpreted by positive 
laws. The one as much as the other has reference to the specifi¬ 
cation and determination of the rights and duties of man in 
respect to nature and society in which he lives. Justice is nothing 
other than the sanction of these relations between man and men, 
man and society, and between man and civil and political author¬ 
ity. Naturally Justice is one and the same for all men, because 
the laws that regulate individual and social human life, as well as 
civil and political, have reference to all and each individual, all 
and each member of an homogeneous ethnical community. And 
it is on account of diversity of races and ethnical communities 
that positive laws, be they civil as well as political, are different, 
the one from the other. Nevertheless, they admit of no excep¬ 
tions or privileges, the rich as well as the poor, the strong as 
well as the weak, the gifted as well as the ignorant, the sovereign 
as well as the subjects, all are and must be subjected in the same 
measure to social justice, to that tribunal to which belongs the 
duty to resolve in conformity of the laws all the social, individual 
civil and moral, political and religious anomalies and deformities 
of whatever nature and of whatever entity. 

11 


Justice is that sovereign deity figured by the ancients with 
the scale of equality in one hand and a sword of impartiality in 
the other. Without equality and impartiality of justice, and 
without profound knowledge of natural and civil laws of natural 
and positive rights and duties of man as an individual, true 
justice is impossible in the world, but it is only possible to have 
a partisan justice, egoistic and fantastic; a chimerical justice like 
that observed to-day in many people where justice is admin¬ 
istered either with religious favoritism, industrial, political, 
monarchial or republican favoritism, and even with favoritism 
of criminality itself. 

Justice is superior to every man, society or state, to subjects 
as well as legislators, sovereign and emperors who should genu¬ 
flect before it, just as they pretend that their subjects genuflect 
before them. 

Therefore it is easy to divine why justice, this supreme 
factor of political life, has not been with us in* the past. 

Judges are the guardian angels, the protectors of the invio¬ 
lable human rights, the agents of order. To these society has 
intrusted the high charge of watching for the equal observation 
and impartial application of them to the practical life of their 
civil and political community. 

Now, it is impossible that a judge be able to impose obedience 
to the laws for their practical application if he himself does not 
first know well and deeply this code of laws, laws that are varied 
and diverse in different circumstances of place, time and person. 
He must likewise have such and so many sentiments of equality 
and impartiality as to know how to apply best the laws in each 
case and cure the wounds of individual and social criminality. 
He must be as a doctor, who, applying with wisdom, prudence and 
discretion the remedies suggested by science, cures the infirmities 
and does not render them more acute and serious. Now, to the 
indebted science of a doctor a long, practical experience is neces¬ 
sary, and often this is worth more for the doing of good to 
Society than the highest general theoretical instruction. The 
same is the case for the judge. Besides the indebted legal science 
there is necessary a natural equality and sentiment of impar¬ 
tiality in his heart, and above all a long, practical experience is 
also necessary in the exercise of his ministry and apostleship. 

Instead, we ordinarily see judges that have never known 
theoretically the voluminous code of human civil laws (such code 
not yet written in America), and often they lack some of tfie 
same elementary principles of natural equality and almost always 
lack the long experience and practice which could in a certain 
way compensate for the shortness of the first two requisites. 
Why all this? Because the judges and magistrates are elected 
bv the people, and hence they are more or less the faithful 
expression of the latter inclination. In Philadelphia in the last 
election, after the institution of the Municipal Court, adopted 

12 


in the last session of the legislature in Pennsylvania one assisted 
in the spectacle of seeing (always with due respect to certain 
eminent members of the Philadelphia bar) a phalanx of candi¬ 
dates for judges, as if justice was being treated as a “boiled 
potato.” 

Judges are elected by political parties, and naturally rising 
in power they must act in the interest of their electors, and in 
this manner there is no difference between judicial authority and 
political authority. • 

The judges are elected almost always by corruption with 
gold of the great corporations and trusts, who find profitable 
their affairs of spending millions of dollars in the elections to 
corrupt the electors in order to place in office a judge or magis¬ 
trate, to the end of accomplishing undisturbed their monopolistic 
and criminal undertakings to the charge of the populace. The 
same is with the judges appointed under the rules of the Con¬ 
stitution. Therefore judges can never administer true justice. 

It is necessary that they be instructed and educated much 
better in legal science and in practices of jurisprudence, and 
therefore the first thing is to abolish the use of electing and 
appoint magistrates and judges in order to avoid the possibility 
of electing judges of social, civil and political indignity. A judge 
must be of career and placed in office by promotions and for 
individual merits, be they in their legal branch or in practice. 
This is the only branch where civil service should be severally 
applied. Other branches of the government should be regulated 
by the party in power, which is responsible to the people who 
raised it into ’power. 

The judges must be the light which shines in the darkness 
as for intellectual and moral competency. 

The magistrature has need of a radical reform, with the 
criterion that justice and its administrators must not lead them¬ 
selves into association or into civil and political movements. 
Justice must control the officials of the government, state and 
city, who must in* turn be subject to the judicial verdict ec|ually 
as the poorest and impotent citizen of the state. In brief, a judge 
must be so by career and promoted by merits. 

This reform was impossible in the days of the great Repub¬ 
lican wound, which caused serious reasoning to the greatest 
statesmen, not excluding Presidents Roosevelt or Taft. It comes 
portune and easy in the days of true social democracy, led by 
able statesmen in matters pertaining to rights and duties, laws 
and justice and social science, which the Republic of North 
America has never had as yet. 

Administration of justice, from city, county and state, should 
pass under the control of the Minister of Justice and be inde- 
})endent of any political movement. 


13 


EDUCATION. 


The highest mission of the politics of a state is uniform 
and complete education of the great ethnical mass, which is 
united under the same play. It is not sufficient that a state strive 
to consolidate civilly and materially internally and at the same 
time defend itself from the attacks of other nations. 

A state is not very great if it is not capable of educating 
its people in the duties and rights belonging to them as part of 
the^r domestic, social, civil and political life. It is much easier 
to form a nation than to form its citizens. While the rough 
masses of people, as the result of sacrifice, loss of blood and 
heroism, succeed in organizing themselves in liberty and inde¬ 
pendence in their political life, they are incapable of remaining 
always united and compact, because no matter how much a 
people be evolved and possess high common ideas, it cannot have 
uniform ideas and sentiments, nor can it last forever in its 
enthusiasm and political heroism, which would cause it to sacri¬ 
fice all other particulars and various divergences and opinions 
belonging to single individuals who are born and die differently 
from each other. 

It is the first duty of a state, as soon as consolidated, to 
take care of and educate each and every one of its subjects in a 
uniform manner and convenient, according to the exigencies of 
progress and civilization of the present time and according to 
the internal necessities of the new political and social body. 

The problem of national education is to-day, if not alto¬ 
gether, in certain states, certainly misunderstood, as the result 
of which we often assist in the spectacle of brothers killing 
brothers and children committing patricides. The state should 
impart an education equal for all and uniform not only in the 
doctrines, but in the text books as well, because only in such 
wise means could certain noxious and futile controversies be 
eliminated. This is specially true along such branches as sociol¬ 
ogy and politics. Such controversies are first merely theoretical, 
then later pass into the real state and facts. Above all, educate 
women into the duties of womanhood and men in their duties 
of manhood. 

Anarchy, opposition and other false theories which are at 
present afflicting society could not be possible if in schools and 
houses certain books full of rebellions and incendiarism were 
not being studied. It would not be possible to see in the same 
state so many organizations, parties, societies, mostly chartered 
under the very laws of the State, all professing various mixtures 
of semi-scientific theories, or social, artistic or political, but all 
professing doctrines of campanilism, diverse or opposed, which 
every day come against each other and again give rise to new 
results and combinations of spurious social and abnormal life, 
thus arresting in the people the inovement of natural evolution. 

A society, a club, or any other organization chartered under 

14 


the laws of the state made up of American citizens, we see them 
making public demonstrations, parading through the streets of 
a city with a flag—French, Italian, German, Irish, or some other 
nationality—and we see public officers invited to be present at a 
celebration not in the least American in national character. 

All this is not only illogical but also intolerable, and no 
authority should permit it. 

If science is one because the truth is one; one history of a 
people because of a single fact; single is philosophy because 
single are logic and ethics, which make the foundations constant 
and uniform of all the other science, both social and political, 
then why should there be different text books, different teachers, 
diverse courses of study and varied systems of education? 

It can be said that there are colonies here, composed of 
immigrants conserving the principles, education and system of 
life of the land of their origin. But in America there are no 
colonies; this prejudice should cease. The immigrant once be¬ 
coming an American citizen has no right or duty other than 
that of being an American citizen and, remaining such, to observe 
the laws of his adopted fatherland; but if this citizenship is 
taken as a basis of speculation it is the duty of the authority to 
take precaution against the infringer. This is the education first 
necessary to eliminate so many abuses. 

The more does teaching unify and intensify itself, the more 
homogeneous beings will be created in the world; the more homo¬ 
geneity of induction and conception, the more homogeneity of 
language and writing. The more a political mass is homogeneous 
in its intellectual and moral capacity, the more is it united and 
solid in its ideal; more respectful and obedient to its government 
and to its authority, which it must love, because there shows a 
love for the subjects. 

Education is not the same thing as instruction; this has 
reference to a simple erudition and knowledge of the mind, 
whereas education has reference also and principally to the 
heart. 

In the United States the system of teaching is varied and 
diversified in each state, county and city. There is no uniform 
and national teaching, but a miscela of books and diverse theories 
in all the branches of knowledge. The universities themselves, 
which in preference to the other schools should be the centraliz¬ 
ing of all the doctrines more universal and uniform, are curriculi 
of perfection different from the diverse courses in the primary 
schools. 

The government has not its Minister of Public Instructions, 
from whom should emanate the supreme direction and co-ordina¬ 
tion of the schools of the whole nation. 

We see permitted in the United States private and parochial 
schools. There is nothing more pernicious for the youths than 
to be educated with diverse sentiments, especially in the domestic 
and religious fields. In the private schools the tender generations 

15 


are educated in the varied and different systems of domestic 
social life, which are as many as there are private teachers, on a 
life more or less conservative or reformistic and of belief more 
or less liberal or superstitious. In parochial schools there pre¬ 
vails the teaching of the religious confessions professed by the 
priest or pastor. Catholic or Protestant or Episcopalian, etc. 
Hence the school begins with the Ave Maria and ends with the 
Gloria Patri. So much in that or in this one does not teach the 
youth unprejudicedly and clearly the truth of science, the philos¬ 
ophy of the individual and of society, the true science and 
philosophy with liberty of the different religious beliefs. And 
besides the deficiency of teaching in these schools there are com¬ 
mitted those misdeeds which are the first attacks on the public 
order and national institutions themselves. Between private and 
ministers there exists a relation, mutually helping each other in 
turn, permitting to pass as assiduous frequentators of the schools 
children who never frequent it or who absent themselves for 
weeks and months without any reason. 

All this should be eliminated in America, where with so 
great and vast political unity of forty-eight states there should 
correspond as much uniformity and unity in the educational 
branch. 

If the parochial school is German, it prides itself on the 
traditions of Germany; if it is Italian, to the traditions of Italy; 
if Irish, it glorifies itself in the traditions of Ireland. 

Where there now reigns the greatest variety and confusion, 
whether in the technical branches of teaching or in the scientific, 
is in the text-books themselevs. 

The program of study is not uniform, nor are the schools 
well divided and graded in the two branches of intellectual and 
moral culture, common and manual, commercial and industrial. 
Science and work are mixed both in theory and in practice. 

The central government and the government of the diverse 
states do not exercise any control or direction whatever in the 
branch of public education which would be altogether abandoned 
to the monopolies of the different religious sects or private inter¬ 
ests if it were not for the few rules concerning the compulsory 
attendance in school of children of a given age and the care to 
maintain the locals in a hygienic state, and to the best interests 
of public health. 

Public education should have a special and central office at 
Washington, D. C.; states and cities should not in any way inter¬ 
vene in the technical or directive branch of teaching, but should 
simply assist and help the central power in Washington, render¬ 
ing executive the orders and distributing and watching the 
teachers in the states and see that they are capable. In the 
schools there should be given an education a little more intel¬ 
lectual and moral than manual, leaving the latter to arts and 
business schools, which should follow those of general culture. 

Only thus could politics regulate, direct and control the 

16 


rising generations, which to-day, as the result of the laws of 
protection, are brought up indisciplinate and insolent. 

GOVERNMENT IN POLITICS. 

Government is the centralized and supreme power of a nation 
jjresiding over the order, control and protection of all aspira¬ 
tions, ideals and necessities of its (organic) social and civil life. 

Therefore government represents a power rather executive 
than directive, rather administrative than legislative, democratic 
representative more than aristocratic directive. 

The erroneous conception of the ideal government has been 
the very first cause of the variety of governing regimes, which, 
however, are also made undergoing the general laws of evolution 
or the laws of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, 
as the result of which from the absolute and tyrannical regime, 
found in Russia, we pass on down to American democracy, which 
to-day stands out in the world as the maximum development of 
political life. 

In patriarchal times the sovereign of a nation or tribe was 
he who most distinguished himself for knowledge, intelligence, 
physical strength or social ability. In those times the most 
mediocre characters of to-day might have been the supreme 
idols of the old social life, since it did not possess internal organi¬ 
zation or assets, but only gave protection to the races and local 
ethnical characters, wrestling steadfastly and without median 
terms against the neighboring people, aggressors or disturbers. 

Political life was explicated only in the negative form; that 
is, through the defense of the community which was then about 
to enter in its social and collective life. 

Everything then was still in the natural state. The con¬ 
stituents adored their ruler like an idol; they placed in him all 
their trusts; he was venerated in all and everywhere. But grad¬ 
ually these leaders of people or races, because prepossent, tyran¬ 
nical and surrounded by similar elements, founded the regime of 
absolutism, a pale shadow of which now remains in the govern¬ 
ment of the Russian Czar.. Still, after a time, the peopel arose 
to claim their natural rights, and tore and wrested the absolute 
regime, the privileges of abuse, so rendering government more 
humane and as the result, behold—Modern Monarchies. 

But if these were the forms of government adapted for 
medieval times, they certainly are not the expression of the 
modern people. Monarchies are loaded with too many privileges 
which in a sense resemble absolute government, hence in modern 
times, beginning with the French Revolution, the people again 
overthrew the monarchical yoke and handed the leadership of 
public life to a president. 

Behold the modern republics. However these, no matter 
how liberal they be, as in France, are not as yet really popular 
institutions. Republican government is a regime popularly repre- 

17 


seiitative more in form than in substance. Even in a republic 
there are found many monarchical principles, and especially its 
legislative power is not unlike that of the monarchical. 

A people only up to a certain point has the power to make 
valid its wishes, because officials of the government have with 
them the police and the executive power, which enables them to 
impose their will on the people whenever the latter is not dis¬ 
posed to listen. 

In other words, in the republic there is still the method of 
command instead of that of administration. 

In the democratic government there is all that the people 
could desire. Here the president does not have the right to dic¬ 
tate and impose his will, but suggests the best methods of direc¬ 
tion, according to the demand of the people as set forth in public 
demonstration, reunions, by the press, popular referendum and 
all that is expressed by the collective desire of the subjects. 

In a democratic government the judiciary power is even 
superior to the government itself and its politics, as we demon¬ 
strated in the third chapter. The parliamentarians are not only 
the faithful carriers of the people’s voices, but are also the 
mirror in which are reflected all the problems, the postulates, 
questions and demands of public life. 

The people should not be so pressing in their eft'orts to show 
to the representatives their needs, but there should be under¬ 
stood by intuition, by the same parliamentarians, who themselves 
justly remunerated, being employed in the great statal adminis¬ 
tration, have the right and desire to serve the people in whatever 
is desired from them. Therefore it is no longer necessary to 
make more laws, which are always odious brakes and contrary to 
the liberty of a people, but only to modify those already existing, 
rendering them smoother and more just in their application. It 
is necessary, then, to study methods in order to re-establish 
equality of social rights and inculcate the sentiment of respect 
for them, instead of creating new unbalancements between rights 
and duties, adding to this or that with new and imperious laws. 

The fewer positive laws a people has the better and more 
quiet does it line under the rule of natural ethics. Social life is 
nothing else but the development, the amplification and perfection 
of individual life, and political life and development of the 
highest relation between the various social community, therefore 
political life is of the same nature as the individual and, like it, 
is better exploited in the sphere of natural laws than in that of 
positive laws. Thus the political democratic life of a people 
which is well evoluted, is exploited, developed and perfected 
with a body of positive laws which are the faithful interpretation 
of natural laws and sanction the rights of the citizen in the same 
manner that ethics and morals sanction the rights of man. 

If, therefore, the legislative and judiciary power must be 
subordinate to the supreme will of the people, consequently the 
executive, which itself is subordinate to the legislative and foi¬ 
ls 


lows it side by side, must itself be nothing more than the just 
sanction of the same people, and the police should attend to the 
scrupulous, exact, impartial and energetic observation of civil 
and political laws. 

The executive power is subordinate to the legislative just 
as this is to the judiciary. \\ hile the ancients say, “divide et 
impera,’’ the modern people say, “be united and obey.’’ 

The executive power must obey the will of the people after 
having united it in all its relations—civil, social, political, national 
and international. 


SOCIAL ECONOMY. 

The political life of a people is reasonably directed by the 
development of its social life, which in turn has its foundation 
in social economy. By the equilibrium of the factors of the 
latter, capital and labor, which give place to the industrial and 
commercial life, depends the equilibrium, and therefore the 
progressive development of civil and political life. If the indus¬ 
trial commercial field is disturbed, disturbed will also be the 
social and political life of a people, whose prosperity, peace and 
civil progress (and therefore liberty and political independence) 
are like flowers which bloom only in fertile grounds, rich in 
nutritive substances and irrigated by abundant waters. 

In America political life finds itself hindered in its move¬ 
ment because it is disturbed in its economical equilibrium. 

Ordinarily the economical crisis usually occurs through 
sperequazione of production and consumption, but in America 
this general rule finds its exception. There is always sufficient 
production here, and the latter finds its equilibrium in the increas¬ 
ing consumption of a cosmopolitan people who augment from 
day to day, just as the increasing consumption always finds ready 
the inexhaustible production of the riches which are in the 
viscera of this immeasurable continent. The equilibrium in the 
economical world of America is only possible at the fulcrum, at 
the point of support, at the median terminal of the great lever 
which determines the economical life of this country—labor with 
its inseparable factor—capital. Gold and labor are the two 
crossed bars which sustain the great American economical edifice 
and regulate (without they in turn being regulated by any other 
factor) the destinies of the same production and consumption ; 
that is to say, industry and commerce, labor and money, consti¬ 
tute in America two diverse but inseparable markets, from whose 
united prosperity depends the prosperity of the entire economical 
life of a country. 

To-day one laments the high cost of living, the miserable¬ 
ness of salaries, the agitation in the laboring field, the destructive 
action of the monopolies of the diverse industries. Why? Be¬ 
cause the world of money has had the upper hand on that of 
labor. 


19 


In America to-day one does not work to live, but one lives 
in order to accumulate money. It is not the money which serves 
for life, but the latter for the former. The more money one has 
the more he seeks, and in the tumultuous march for the conquest 
of the gold one tramples on the most inviolable rights of man 
and of citizen, amassing innocent laboring victims. Beneath the 
heaviest weight of the immense ingots accumulated in the Repub¬ 
lican regime the big and heavy wheels of the great car of labor 
have broken crackling, and a mass of people seek about in vain 
for bread and help (strange to conceive) from those same per¬ 
sons who were the cause of their ruin and execution. 

Alisery abounds in countries in which gold abounds, because 
misery is the daughter of gold. Now, all this economical disaster 
is derived from the' fact that one has wished to protect too much 
the internal production and even the American capitalist, who by 
this time had monopolized and controlled every sort of produc¬ 
tion. 

The politics of the United States has undergone a grave 
reversal in the economic branch, because in the industrial and 
commercial protectionistic politic one has forgotten to acknowl¬ 
edge and sanction the rights of the people, by whose labor one 
owes every production and therefore every activity, development 
and progress in the industrial and commercial fields. There is 
necessary, therefore, a remedy to so many evils and the tri¬ 
umphant new Democracy, risen to power, has recognized the 
gravity of the historical moment in the industrial and commercial 
camps and behold the new legislation of the tarifif and the 
income tax in order to close to the people the doors of misery 
and snatch from their mouth the meat macerated by putrefaction, 
arrested by the action of ice in the cold storage, eggs kept for 
years in the ice chests, and all other foods placed out on the 
market little by little in order to gather the maximum lucre with 
the minimum sale. 

Thus are gathered the millions of capitalists enriched with 
the work of the masses. It is their duty to unload in the Federal 
treasury that unjust lucre, the result of their tyranny to the 
people. 

Medieval times are past in American politics and the modern 
era has been inaugurated, the era of the French Revolution, of 
the radical civil and political reform. This is the mission to be 
explicated by the directors of the new Democracy. 

With the new tarifif and income tax a certain equilibrium has 
been established between the rich and the poor, capitalists and 
workers. Aristocracy has received a lowering blow, while 
democracy has been pushed upward. With the new banking and 
anti-trust legislation the disturbed equilibrium of the industrial 
market, commerce and finance will be still better re-established. 

Flence it is necessary to formulate a complete legislation 
for the working class regulating work. This is a problem always 
discussed but never solved, simply because the old Re])ublican 

20 


party had all the interest centered in maintaining the working¬ 
man subjected under the yoke of service and tyranny. 

With a neuseating, most severe system of protection, every 
free action in industry and internal and foreign commerce 
paralyzed, we could never hope that the workingman would 
receive the necessary consideration, since it was due to him, 
more than the natural crude riches of the land, that the progress 
reached in industry and commerce, civic and domestic and social, 
has been attained. 

Now this industrial and commercial progress has been 
paralyzed and choked by the monetary industrialism of the rich 
capitalists, and to replace it to its normal state of progressive 
movement it is necessary to give the workingman that esteem, 
faculty, power and authority which he had (only in the working 
branch) in the early times of the economical, social industrial¬ 
ism. With a better legislation for the working class, with the 
acknowledgment of the individual and social rights of the 
workingman; with better wages and lessening of the suffering 
on the working mission, the workingman gathering new strength 
and new moral and physical impetus, individual and social, will 
be more able and resistible in his work; with a lesser struggle 
for life he will better and more willingly keep the fight against 
nature “which to art is deaf” and, bettering the work, will better 
the production. Augmenting this, industry and commerce will 
be bettered and multiplied, the citizens of the Republic will live 
happier and more comfortable, decreased will be the number of 
crimes (which ordinarily are the fruits of poverty), progress 
will advance, likewise civilization, and all this will be the effect 
of that sage, prudent and bold Democratic politic which surely 
will write in the political and civic history a page never before 
written by any other party of this nation. 

FINANCES. 

The spring which sustains the equilibrium of economical 
forces is finance. The money market is the basis of industrial 
and commercial riches of a nation. The product of labor, utility, 
and the lucre derived from industries and commerce constitutes 
what is called capital or finance. The more and greater are the 
capitalists in a state, the more is this rich in production and 
labor. Popular masses have better chance of a prosperous life 
and fewer stringencies of economical and social life, and in con¬ 
sequence to the domestic and social economic prosperity must 
correspond a relative and equivalent national prosperity. 

These are the theoretical principles regulating social life of a 
mass of individuals, constituted in form of a nation, but in 
practice facts work out differently. 

For that natural cupidity which man possesses to desire 
more as he more possesses, and forgets the principles governing 
the people, the more he elevates himself in the privileged sphere 

21 


of capital and finance, it often happens that where capital abounds 
work is lacking or this is poorly executed, for continuous 
“sabotage” and consequent arguments and social disorders often 
arise, as the result of which we often assist in crises which 
appear strange just because inconceivable and unreasonable in 
origin and development. Very often work lacks where capital 
abounds, and misery is next door to riches. Rather the states 
of economical, political life are two only—maximum poverty and 
maximum riches. In America to-day capitalism has supremely 
overthrown social, economic and political life. The monopolies 
of the trust and great corporations have been made possible only 
through the great monopoly in the financial market, which until 
yesterday has been the stumbling block for more equous legisla¬ 
tion in economics, with a radical reform in the field of capital 
and labor. Everywhere in America rules the system of centrali¬ 
zation, and this system in the branches of finances means strangu¬ 
lation of private industries and destruction of smaller operators, 
who are absorbed by the bigger ones, just as in the sea the 
larger fishes swallow the smaller. To-day life is paralyzed in all 
its activities, individual and social, and politics is confused, 
disturbed in its supreme direction, because the executive power 
must be held up for the benefit of the see-saw of political parties 
from which depend the life and death of the United States. 
Capitalism—that is, private finance—has reached the climax. It 
is not possible to go farther, since it has succeeded in taking 
away from the smaller wheels of the great economical mechanism 
all the necessary cogs. Broken the wheels, broken is the clock 
of political life, and here, therefore, we find general paralysis 
of industries and commerce on account of the paralysis of the 
money market. It is not only necessary to again grease the axles 
of these wheels, but also once more connect the cogs. It is 
necessary to subtract on one side and add to the other. The 
money must be reorganized and reconstructed anew, and once 
this is renovated, industries and commerce will retake the normal 
course and the people will be unbound of the chains of an 
economic and political slavery. 

This is the task of the new Democracy once in power. 

The old political parties, one after another, have degenerated, 
deviating from their ultimate objective and purpose. To-day 
we are assisting to coalitions of political parties tending not to 
install a new and better ordination of politics, but simply to 
destroy a given opposed party. To the frank and genuine politics 
of old with definite principles, ideals and scopes have succeeded 
a political bizarre and fusionist. This is the best proof of the 
confusion reigning in political movements, equal to that which 
is in the social and economic camp. Therefore, also in politics the 
idea has been made manifest; that is, the monopolistic idea of 
the centralization of forces of the stronger industrial men and 
capitalists who, after dominating the economic underworld, to¬ 
gether with the industrial and commercial, and after having 

22 


centralized and paralyzed every one^ of its movements in private 
finances, has now ceased to dominate politics. The new Democ¬ 
racy has broken the old bars, opening the economic market with 
the new tariff, and taking away from the vaults of millionaires 
the surplus which was unrighteously usurped from the people, 
makes it now pass into the treasury of the state with the income 
tax. 

Now we are in the midst of the banking reforms, or rather 
the reorganization and control of finances. For this is necessary 
a system of protection and official control of the nation, and 
after this reform it will be easy to reform also the world of 
trusts, that line of parasitism on the private finance which in 
America is contrary to the national finance, which theoretically 
and practically should govern all finance, whether social or indi¬ 
vidual. 


In the midst of the vast camp of modern Democracy we 
see towering the grand political figure of the progressivist, 
Theodore Roosevelt. He was and will remain one of the greatest 
statesmen, not only in America, but in the entire world, and he 
is the one who has, more than any other, contributed to the 
triumph of the new Democracy. He, in all his political career, 
begun since the age of twenty-one in New York, has shown to 
feel in his soul an imperious and humanitarian duty; that is, 
with his activity, to be of need to the American people, be it as 
citizen or as President of the nation. Living at the time in which 
Republicanism was at the height of its splendor, although realiz¬ 
ing the merits and desserts of this in the branch of economical 
and political protection of the United States, in his heart he felt 
other beats more active, of new enterprise which would be the 
explication of identities still greater and nobler than those of the 
Republican party, among which he was dwelling. 

From the beginning of his political career, whether as Com¬ 
missioner of New York police or as a public official in other 
offices which he occupied, he did not hide to those who were 
more intimate these new ideals and sentiments for politics vaster, 
more modern, wiser and more illuminated by the doctrines of 
contemporaneous science. 

He has consumed his life reading and studying books of 
every sort, of all the nations, knowing several languages; there¬ 
fore he has been able to furnish himself with knowledge of 
cosmopolitan theories and facts, and to the learned man who can 
unite the practice does not lack a special way of thinking and 
wanting differently from that of others more or less specialized 
in one or in a few branches of social life. But this stream of 
doctrines, sui generis and of altruistic sentiment of a great man 
who finds himself implicated for inclination in the political life 
of his fatherland, were restrained and held concealed by him 
for fear that, set forth, they would offend his friends in senti- 

23 



iiient who were not so amply liberal and highly noble as he. No 
one loved and loves the fatherland as Theodore Roosevelt loved 
and loves; he who to-day is accused of opposition, socialism, and 
even anarchy, by reason of his highly modern theory of the 
supreme authority of the people. Precisely this was the eruption 
of the great stream and production of his political personality 
which to-day has given life and existence to a third American 
political party, the Rooseveltian Progressivism, a party which 
had its baptism of blood in the convention of Chicago when (the 
Great) Roosevelt, no longer fearing the fury of his enemies, with 
a bullet in his breast, presented himself in the vestibule of the 
convention in Chicago in order to discourse the cause of the 
resurrection of American politics. And while he sought to iniect 
in the veins of the decrepit political organism the new blood of 
the reform and sought to clear the overcoat already soiled by 
the old Republican party, even this was stolen from him. 

In Chicago, seeing the ingratitude and thanklessness of his 
old friends, he was forced to put forth his new political system 
with the sovereignty of the people as its basis—a system which 
almost cost him his life and which to-day he still sustains and 
propagates by means of his new party, even in Argentina and in 
Brazil seeking to convert to the new political verb even the other 
American continent where he has spoken on the theme of ‘‘Truth 
and Half Truth,” and in calling socialism collectivism, and cap¬ 
italism industrialism. 

He has said that the two parties have manifested a half 
truth, and that the entire truth lies in the union of these two half 
truths, and necessarily exposed his great and popular political 
system conservative in essence, but reformative and radical in 
the form and in means. 

Amicus Plato, sed magis arnica veritas. 

Thus becomes exploded every accusation of opposition, 
socialism and anarchy launched against him in Chicago. 

These theoretical humanitarian sentiments which to-day 
illuminate his apostolate, were in the past well manifested during 
his splendid political career, and on the battlefield of Cuba. 
Colonel Roosevelt is an unselfish leader and not a speculator who 
assumes for himself the defense of the country and the rights of 
civilization against the barbarism and tyranny in Cuba. The 
American people therefore having understood his philanthropic, 
patriotic and humanitarian spirit, elected him Vice-President 
during the McKinley administration, and later President of the 
United States. Roosevelt was not elected President as the efifort 
of a given party, because, like Woodrow Wilson, he did not 
belong to any party (although externally in form only he ap¬ 
peared to be a friend of the Republican). His party was the 
New Democracy, like that of Wilson, and for that very reason 
the whole American people, with a spontaneous unanimous vote, 
declared him Chief of the Republic. 

Having become President, following the death of President 
24 


McKinley, according to the constitutional law, his hands were 
free. Not being subject to any political party, he did what he 
could not have done if it had been necessary for him to continue 
allegiance to any given party which had elected him. 

A free, active and, in a certain way, restless spirit, had he 
given such manifestations to his early political career, he would 
have compromised his future, and had he been in Russia, Ger¬ 
many or Italy, or any other decidedly conservative nation, he 
would, in all probability, have been locked in jail for life, or 
probably sent to penal baths, or he would have had to contradict 
himself, his ideals and sentiments ; undergo a similar metamor¬ 
phosis to that of the little tadpoles when they develop into duet 
frogs, just the same as lately has taken place in other places, 
and in Italy with the conversion of Enrico Ferri and other 
reformers, who appear to have given themselves body and soul 
to an extreme conservatism. 

However, Roosevelt would never have ceded to any his¬ 
torical reason, because he himself is a missionary creating new 
humanitarian beliefs and sageness in the political and civil fields. 

Succeeding him came Taft, a very good man and a learned 
magistrate; a man whom Roosevelt hoped he could depend upon 
to prepare his radical reform and then actuate it in a successive, 
hoped-for term. 

But this, the result of party intrigues, failed, and when he 
saw that the American people, with the dawning of the New 
Democracy, already had fluttered its wings in the direction of 
Baltimore, in order to place itself on the banner of Woodrow 
Wilson, he bravely helped the election of the new master: 

Ut claz'iim rectum teneam, navemqiie giibernem, 
and defeated his foes. 

The ultra modern Rooseveltian ideals and his progressivism 
could not at once be understood and accepted as practical by a 
people accustomed to a rigid political conservatism, first taking 
a middle course and ascending on the first step of the Wilsonian 
Democracy, being always necessary to first educate the American 
people in his special Nationalism, which, after all, is the sure 
guarantee of the final triumph of the Rooseveltian progres¬ 
sivism. 

The American nation can well be proud of the fact that 
it has enrolled in the ranks of the New Democracy one of its 
greatest statesmen. 

It seems strange, but nevertheless it is true. 


That which to-day is lamentable is the great variety and 
multitude of political parties which are multiplying, associating, 
founding and breaking themselves daily. The electorial period, 
instead of amalgamating more the diverse tendencies of the 

25 



different parties and concentrating them towards the sole common 
limit, i. e., the good government of this florid and great Republic, 
they have centuplicated the social miseries, and confoundness is 
at its maximum in all the branches of social and civil life. 

Religion, education, finance, work, poverty, riches, democ¬ 
racy, aristocracy, are battling among themselves and political 
confusion is at its summit because it is the contention of the 
individual elements of these. It is necessary to discipline every¬ 
thing and to reordinate the civil world; it is necessary to control 
the activity of private and direct them to the concentration of a 
great and vital political body. 

And to this end it is necessary to work upon a common 
basis and pedestal. Nationalism (as it was shown in the first 
chapter of this volume). 

In no country more than in the United States does one 
see the great necessity of a uniform political life. Here the 
political and social dissension is too great and the Republic of 
North America, instead of being one nation, is a federation of 
States so large as to be corresponding nations. In the United 
States there is not that political concentration which exists in 
other states with federal regime, as in Germany and in Switzer¬ 
land. The government of Washington has the supreme direction 
of the States simply concerning the relations which the States 
have among themselves. Religion, education, patriotism, finance, 
labor, etc., are elements which are diversely directed and con¬ 
trolled in the individual States and which do not in the least 
enter under the direction and control of the Federal power. 

Until there is established in America the true system of 
Nationalism, and they will absorb in this all the other statal 
patriotism more or less in collusion with the patriotism of 
Washington, it is useless to speak of American unity and inde¬ 
pendence, and it is for this reason that to-day in the land of 
liberty and riches one laments the wounds of civil and political 
slavery and misery. 





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